It is well known to provide touch-up paints for use in covering scratches and other blemishes in walls, road vehicles, household appliances, furniture and other such products having a quality finish. These touch-up products have usually taken the form of a relatively small bottle having a cap from which is suspended an applicator brush. Other prior art containers have taken the form of aerosol cans from which touch-up paint is dispensed.
With greater emphasis placed on quality in automotive, appliance, etc., finishes it is often times desirable to use a rubbing compound after a touch-up paint has been applied for the purpose of removing slight blemishes in the paint surface. Rubbing compounds are commercially available although they are relatively inconvenient to use when packaged in rather large containers. The touch-up paint job is usually relatively small. Consequently a user will not normally take the time or trouble to purchase a separate container of rubbing compound in order to improve the quality of the touch-up finish.
A problem often met with in applying the paint is the difficulty of applying the paint to the scratched or chipped portion without also overpainting the surrounding unmarred finish with excess paint. Generally, the overpainted portion no longer matches the remainder of the surface and thus continues to lack an unblemished appearance which is desirable for a complete repair of the original finish. Although, individuals may have attempted to wipe away the excess new paint with a dry cloth, the problem has always been to remove the excess paint without, on the one hand, marring the original finish in those areas immediately adjacent the scratch or chip and, on the other hand, removing all of the paint applied to the chipped or scratched portion. Up to the present time there has been a notable lack of success in achieving a truly effective touch-up method which can be easily used by the general public.
Repair specialists have long experimented with methods of touching up marred, scratched and nicked paint on walls, surfaces, automobiles and other vehicles that have been damaged by collisions, vandals or the like. However damaged, dings, nicks and scratches in the paint are not only unsightly and value reducing, but also are accelerators of rust on substrates. Dust, dirt, salt, moisture, rain and other elements pierce the blemished paint and corrode or damage the substrate. This further reduces the value of the substrate as well as reducing the structural integrity of the item being protected by the paint.
To the cost conscious consumer, a small nick or ding or blemish is hardly worth the time and money to employ a professional to restore or fix the nick or blemish. In an attempt to overcome the need for expensive paint sprayers and the like, do-it-yourselfers have turned to more mundane means to effectively touch up slightly marred paint.
One such approach has been to use a conventional disposable hypodermic syringe. The worker fills the reservoir in the syringe with a desired paint solution and then attempts to apply the paint to the blemish through the needle. Conventional needles have a sharp, slanted distal end, designed to pierce skin so that medicine or the like may be delivered subcutaneously. Such sharp needles are poorly suited for the application of paint. The sharp distal end may inadvertently gouge, pit or scratch the paint that the user is trying to repair, and in some cases exacerbating the problem, especially if the paint is fairly thin. For example, conventional paint finishes on auto bodies are on the order of 5 mm thick, if a blemish is 2 mm deep, then there is no margin for error while inserting the needle into the blemish. The conventional needle may be much too narrow for the scratch or blemish at hand and repeated passes are required to completely coat the blemish with fresh paint.
It is also known to apply a coat of transparent paint or sealant composition to the touch-up paint to insure proper sealing. Once all of these steps have been completed, the surface of the touch up paint may be uneven proximate the repaired blemish and a standard solvent is frequently used on a cloth to wipe away excess paint or sealant from around the area of the repair.
Thus, with the problems associated with the conventional methods of repairing paint, there is a need to provide an economical, easy method and apparatus to touch up paint on walls, vehicles or other substrates.